Brands everywhere are struggling to compete during a shortage of skilled workers. By making skill and trade training more accessible, we can start to address one of the industry’s biggest challenges.
Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar. A podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance.
Brands everywhere are struggling to compete during a shortage of skilled workers. By making skill and trade training more accessible, we can start to address one of the industry’s biggest challenges. Today we’ll hear Doug Donovan, CEO and Founder of Interplay Learning. Interplay is the global leader in online, Virtual Reality and 3D simulation training for the essential skilled trades.
Guest Bio:
Doug Donovan is the CEO and Founder of Interplay Learning, the global leader in online, Virtual Reality and 3D simulation training for the essential skilled trades. Interplay’s solution is more scalable and effective than traditional methods and is transforming how “hands-on” careers--like electricians, plumbers, maintenance and HVAC technicians--are accessed and trained. More than 1,500 companies are using Interplay to improve their businesses, and more than 175,000 professionals and students have used Interplay products to advance a technical skillset or start a career. Prior to Interplay, Donovan founded two software companies and developed a small ski area in Colorado. Donovan holds a BA from the University of Virginia, and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
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[00:00:00] Sid Shetty: Hello everyone. Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. I'm here today with Doug Donovan, CEO of Interplay. Doug, thank you for being here.
[00:00:09] Doug Donovan: Happy to be here, Sid, on a Friday.
[00:00:11] Sid Shetty: Absolutely. Well, we're glad to have you. So let's start with Interplay, right? What does your company do and what are you trying to solve for?
[00:00:20] Doug Donovan: Interplay is an education software company with a focus on online training for the hands on worker. These are HVAC technicians, plumbers, facility engineers, and the like. And, and our calling card, the thing that has been made us really successful the last Last decade has been our point of view simulations. For those listening and, you know, not being able to see it currently, it really looks like video games, but instead of killing the bad guy, you're troubleshooting a heat pump or, you know, installing a split residential AC system or the like. So we have a platform of content over 400 hours of training that was built entirely for this worker group.
[00:01:03] Sid Shetty: This is the third company you founded. Is that right? So
[00:01:07] Doug Donovan: is. Yeah.
[00:01:08] Sid Shetty: serial entrepreneur. Like, uh, can you share your journey with us?
[00:01:12] Doug Donovan: Yeah, I wish there was like, uh, I wish the story was like clean and obvious, right? Like, oh, of course, that's what you did next, but it's been a little, uh, jumping around for different things. But, I built a, a small, uh, uh, like goods, goods and services company where we were selling bags of home energy items, right? This was sort of the early days of how we make our lives more energy efficient. And so I built a small, uh, small company doing that. Uh, then jumped over completely in a different place after business school, uh, and built a small ski area. And I know it sounds crazy, but you, you know, I was, I've done a couple things in my career. I started in, in finance, then I went to software, a company in, in San Francisco during... The dot com era and started a company there as well and I liked both of those jobs, but I thought, you know, this isn't, this doesn't drive me every day. This isn't, I'm not passionate about any of these. I said, what I'm passionate about is skiing. I want to build a, I want to get in the ski industry. I certainly didn't think I'd be building a ski, a ski resort. I won't bore you with the background, but stumble into an opportunity to build a small ski area in Denver and do that and run it for a few years and then realize like. You should never work in your passion. My passion was skiing, right? And like over five years in that industry, I stopped like skiing at all. And so after, you know, five years wearing long underwear in that industry, I just thought, okay, I got this wrong. This is not my, I wanted to protect my passion. I should do that on the weekends, not five, you know, six days a week in the winter.
[00:02:47] And so I ended up leaving that and, and, and through this other energy efficiency work that I mentioned earlier, ended up sort of backing into this opportunity here. So like I said, no clean trajectory, um, but I'll, you know, what, what typically drives me is just seeing an opportunity. That I think, geez, there's an unmet need here in the market and something that excites me personally. And, and that's happened at all stages of my career and particularly with this one. When we, you asked, the first question is what problem are you solving and fundamentally, as you know, because you're close to the industry, there is a massive and growing skills gap of the electrical, mechanical, uh, workers and skilled trades in this country and I started to solve those, for the energy efficiency side of that, which is really a micro trade inside of all of these trades, right, home energy, auditors, and the like. And then really came to appreciate what a massive skills gap was happening across all the domains, and so while I started with sort of climate focus and energy efficiency, um, uh, I really understood, we started to really uncover the needs on the labor side and as, you know, as we're both living in this era of, you know, pretty massive wealth inequality and an eroding middle class, like, to be able to step into this spot and try to help solve what is really a major societal ill was really invigorating for me. And so the last 12 years have really been a joy trying to build this company. Because I thought if we get it right it could really have a, really frankly, a global impact.
[00:04:22] Sid Shetty: So did you start with the same idea that you have today or did it evolve over,
[00:04:29] Doug Donovan: Fundamentally. Yeah, fundamentally. So we started, uh, we were doing energy efficiency training for home energy auditors and we did a blended class, some online and some in person. This was in San Diego. And we would have to train them in the field. Well, we're training in houses. So I'd have to call you, Sid, and say, Hey, Sid, do you mind if I bring 14 students through your house, in your attic, you know, playing around with your water heater and your combustion appliances to teach them some of these critical skills for energy auditing? And it became so obvious that just doesn't scale, right? You can't. It's just not going to work. And so we were trying to solve it for that problem. We were trying to solve for that in the field training problem. We looked to the military, medical, and aviation industries had been using simulations. For the same type of thing, right? In the field, training is challenging, as you can imagine, for those industries. So they were using simulations for decades. And so we said, geez, we could build energy auditing, uh, simulations. And train people on procedures like combustion safety, etc. In a simulated fashion. And then, and it's that point when we saw a need in HVAC and a need in electrical, etc. And we thought, Geez, we were surprised that nobody was using simulations like they could be, given how powerful they had been in those three other industries, military, medical, and aviation. Who's doing it for the trades? And the short answer was almost nobody. And nobody really had the capital, right?
[00:05:54] Those three industries, well capitalized, lives are at stake. Not a problem to make that investment. There's some obvious people who write big checks like the Department of Defense. Who's going to write that check in the trades world? And the answer was really no one. So you needed a company to kind of make a bet on it. And that's what we did. So yeah, we have not changed, uh, the company at all. I will say we've changed our business model slightly. When we first started, the SaaS world didn't really exist, right? 2011, 2012, we were just starting to understand what SaaS looked like. So, we originally started with more point solutions, and then about 2016, we recognized, geez, we could build a full platform of all of these offerings and go to market with a SaaS model, and that's what we've done.
[00:06:38] But fundamentally, what we've been doing is training on technical skill sets from day one. And the tool to do it has always been these 3D simulations. Now they're way more advanced and way, and now the platform has a lot more 2D training as well. It's all varied activities, but really the pillars are still those simulations.
[00:06:57] Sid Shetty: Are you a platform, and like you, uh, License the tech, or do you also own the content?
[00:07:06] Doug Donovan: We own every bit of the content. We build it all internally. We built an authoring engine. For building this type of learning, right? We, we're not trying to build video games. We're trying to build trainings on installation, diagnostic repair, commissioning, inspection, equipment operation, procedure, preventive maintenance, right?
[00:07:25] There's sort of only certain number of activities we're training on, but we can take that That instruction design across a lot of domains, right? A stroller person needs installation training just like an HVAC person, so some of the instructional design in those SIMs are actually identical. Obviously the art's different, the actual domain specific stuff's different.
[00:07:47] But yes, absolutely. So we build that all in house and, and we don't have the experts in house. What we do is we contract with subject matter experts and, and multiple subject matter experts inside of each domain because I know you'll find this hard to believe, but sometimes like three professional HVAC techs don't agree exactly on how to do something.
[00:08:06] And so sometimes it's a two to one vote that carries us forward exactly how we're designing the training, the modules. Yeah.
[00:08:13] Sid Shetty: Got it. And, and did you start with a specific asset category or trade in mind and you just keep building on it? How do you go about deciding that journey in terms of what content is the most important and where the need exists?
[00:08:28] Doug Donovan: Yeah, that's a good question. So, originally, obviously, starting in energy efficiency, so that sort of got us out, uh, out of the gate, and then we looked around and we had some inbound interest in the HVAC industry, uh, you know, large, large labor force, about 800 to 900, 000 people across the country, large, you know, skills gap, as we talked about, and it has a real interesting, um, intersection of Mechanical and electrical.
[00:08:54] So, as you can imagine, to train in HVAC is typically one of the more challenging things in running a building. Plumbing tends to be a little more straightforward. Electrical on its own, obviously, is challenging. But now you have another mechanical component, right, with the refrigeration cycle. You're moving air and you're moving fluids.
[00:09:11] And you have electrical. So it's complicated enough that you could really leverage the power of simulations. You could really take a, let's take a, you know, two ton rooftop unit and you could, you know, build diagnostic scenarios that would be really hard to train on in real life, right? You can't, maybe you can't blow a motor in real life or train people. It was that like HVAC made a lot of sense because of the power of simulations really aligned well with the learning objectives and the challenges of learning that material and the skills gap was there. The needs was there, needs were there. Um, it tends to be a long tail market. A lot of small mid-size service contractors who didn't have, hadn't invested a lot in their own training program.
[00:09:52] So there's a real opportunity to step in and become the foundational training program for a lot of these companies on day one.
[00:09:59] Sid Shetty: I'd also love to understand, like does a novice Start and then go through a certification process, or do you have to be a certified electrician and then you upskill after that?
[00:10:11] Doug Donovan: Got it. Um, I will say yes to. All, every question there except that last one, actually, the market we don't serve that well is that last one, that master tech who's been in the industry for 15, 20 years, they're less likely to use our platform because, frankly, their experience of where they are, they're probably, you know, they sometimes have some resistance to online training, given their history and where they came from, you know, They might use us for compliance training or they might use us for product specific training.
[00:10:41] But the bulk of our training actually is the first group you mentioned, which is either starting with no skills and becoming employable or valuable to a company, or that, you know, let's say seven year tech and less, and it's really an upscaling platform. So, you know, obviously there's a bunch of layers to your question.
[00:10:59] So we sell number one to employers. And these are sometimes big enterprises, right? They might be big multifamily asset holders, right? I might own 600 apartment buildings across the country. Each one of them has five maintenance techs. That would be a big enterprise client for us because they would then, of those, I don't know the math, I just had to say 3, 000 techs, they need plumbing training, HVAC training, you know, other facilities. Uh, so they would subscribe to our platform, and those companies then, we become their foundational learning program, as you can imagine, and, and they might be cross training, they might be run, running programs where once they demonstrate skills, they get a Tech 2 designation, sometimes even connect, uh, their wage to, you know, some of the demonstrated skills in our platform.
[00:11:44] We really become their career development program and up skilling. And that starts from people who walk in the door. Say, hey, I want to work for you. And they say, geez, Doug, you're a good kid. You look like you want to learn. Great. We've got a training program. We're going to take you along and you might start with a class as simple as what is HVAC, right?
[00:12:01] I mean, really basic and trades math and then all the way up through how do you deal with the preventative maintenance on a fluid cooling tower, right? So there's a pretty massive swath of material you can cover. And so people build these learning paths. So So that's the primary market for us. Those are either big enterprises or small or medium service contractors, right?
[00:12:21] It might be Sally's Heating and Air. They have five, eight trucks. They're rolling around town. And they're always, you know, trying to upskill their, their technicians. That represents about 70 percent of our business, those employers. Um, the other 30 is what you mentioned, which are vocational schools. And I would add into that workforce development.
[00:12:41] So there's obviously the, you know, you can go to the school down the street. Your community college might have a trades program, so a lot of those will power, they'll use our simulations, they'll weave us into their curriculums or their, you know, 18 month program or 12 month program, depending on what it is.
[00:12:57] Or, sometimes there's workforce training centers, like find a job type things, U. S. job centers, you go and say, hey, I'm unemployed, I need some, Uh, some career skills, what can I do? And so they might say, well, we have this new platform, Interplay Learning. You can learn, you know, how to become an HVAC tech or an electrician or, or facility maintenance, etc.
[00:13:16] So that, that market's actually growing a lot, um, because of the need. You know, people have sort of fallen through the cracks. The ones who were told they were supposed to go to a four year institution, it really wasn't right for them and it hasn't worked for them. And like, how do we get them employable skills?
[00:13:32] And these jobs are in every community and they're in demand. And they're relatively easy to access. And so much success. We have a product called the Academy, right? Slightly different than your enterprise, like, you know, Interplay Enterprise. The Interplay Academy is more for that person with, with no demonstratable skills.
[00:13:53] In these trades and being able to go through that 40, 60 hours, depending on it and really be able to knock on an employer and say, look, you want to talk about a multimeter. I know how to use it. You want to talk about the refrigeration cycle. I understand it. So they're really prepped them to, to be helpful on day one, uh, at a, at a, uh, employer.
[00:14:12] Sid Shetty: So Doug, I mean, we all in the industry know this, right? It's a massive shortage in the skilled workforce. Um, there's not enough new blood coming in. Um, you're part of the solution. How are you seeing this being solved for at a broader scale?
[00:14:30] Because there's massive demand, but there's not enough supply, right? And, uh, there's not in a, there's no concerted effort to like bring folks in. How are you part of that solution?
[00:14:42] Doug Donovan: well, a couple of things. Great question. Yeah, it's certainly something we think about a lot. And given that we've been doing this for almost a dozen years, we've seen different phases. And I'll tell you, in the last three or four years, there, I'd say five, six years ago, the narrative really began. You know, we need more folks to follow these careers.
[00:15:01] They're financially rewarding. They really have no ceiling. They're in every community, like we talked about, like. This makes no sense that we're not promoting this more, and I think there was a lot of chatter about that, and I think there's been a number of non profits, you know, big, big companies like Lowe's has a program called Track to the Trades, there, you know, a number, there's an organization called Explore the Trades, there's a lot of, like, I would say evangelism, but it was just that, it was just sort of chatter.
[00:15:27] I would say in the last two or three years, a couple things have happened. One, the schools, the high schools have started recognizing this as well and saying, you know what, like, we're doing our kids a disservice by measuring all our success on how many people, how many students do we send to four year institutions?
[00:15:41] And, and that's a metric that a lot of schools have been using for the last two or three decades as their gold star, right? I mean, as their gold, you know, metric. And so, that's a problem, right? Because it's just not a, a path for everybody. That has now started to change. Like, there's been recognition in real, like, they're starting to shop.
[00:15:59] Okay, what, what else can we do? What would these programs look like? It might be IT paths, right, programming. It might be skilled trades. It might be, uh, allied health. It's like, where else can we send people other than a four year institution? So that's been fun to see that, that, that move.
[00:16:14] Sid Shetty: You think it's changing enough? You think it's
[00:16:16] Doug Donovan: Uh, I mean, it's not, you know, it's, these are big institutions, right?
[00:16:20] These are, they're not known for their, you know, quick movement, government, you know, included. And, however, the thing that has changed, I think it's been the biggest driver of our business. We like to be, you know, think that we're just, we must have gotten the product perfect and we, you know, wow, we're, look how smart we are.
[00:16:39] But I really think there was... A shift in the mentality of the employer. The employer, you know, I think was complaining about, Ah, skills gap. Kids don't come in here. It's not like it used to be. There was just sort of this mentality that said, you know, it's just, you know, this skills gap is killing me. But there wasn't really like a, you know what, I just need to solve this skills gap for my company. And that has changed. The last three or four years we've seen companies say, you know what, I'm not complaining anymore. How do I change this? we talk about the three R's. Recruit, ramp, and retain. And what we argue, and I think the smart companies will identify, is you have to invest in the ramp first.
[00:17:20] And when I say ramp, I'm saying from, you know, anywhere along the, whether it's, you know, mid level tech op, or no skills to mid level, like all of that. Like, a real career. And we have to invest in that program. If we invest in that program, Then, we invest in recruiting. And recruiting gets a whole lot easier because your employees start saying, Jeez, this company's really investing in me.
[00:17:41] And, not surprisingly, you stay at that company longer. So, there's real retention. So, what happened for, I think, a number of years, during the, everyone's complaining, they just worked harder on recruiting. So, they get people in the door, but it failed. Because they didn't invest in a training program, and that was sort of unfair to that new hire, and yeah, some, you know, those people who had the skill set really like could pick it up fast in a, in a lazy, let's call it a lazy job shadow program that has no real like structure to it, like fine, you know, it could work for a few, but mostly it failed, and The recognition by employers saying, I need to invest in this worker group, I need to build a foundational training program, and it's going to help me on both sides, it's going to help me in the recruiting, because now I can widen my pool, I don't need somebody with skills already, I actually have a foundational program that's proven to develop skills, and not surprisingly, when you give, especially this new generation, visibility, visibility, visibility, and do their career development, they stick around.
[00:18:40] If you're, if you're showing, it's not even a money thing as much as it is like, where can I go and are you willing to invest in me? And I think that's been the biggest change. And, and so, one of the reasons I think our business has grown so, uh, well the last three years is they then look online. Well, what kind of solutions are there if I'm going to build a program? And so they might find our solution.
[00:19:03] Sid Shetty: Is there data that shows how many, um, techs are going to be retiring in the next five years. I know it's a pretty significant number, so it's only going to get worse. Folks drop out too, right, because like they might not be the right kind of program to help technicians or, you know, folks that are exploring this new world and new career. The right kind of path and journey that makes them feel like, yes, I can build a life here. And so there's a significant portion that I'm sure also drop out. Like, do you have any data that suggests what happens when done right? And what, what happens when it's not done right?
[00:19:39] Doug Donovan: Well, let me start here. We won't solve the skills gap in our lifetime. Like, you look at the numbers, and this is a systemic generational issue that has to, like, will happen in our working lifetimes. We will not fill these. Right now, in construction alone, I just read in an article something like 600, 000 jobs needed today.
[00:19:58] Not, like, not in the future, not in the next five years. Like, right now, if there were 600 skilled workers in these different domains in construction, They would be hired today. So
[00:20:08] Sid Shetty: 600, 000.
[00:20:10] Doug Donovan: 600, sorry, 600, 000, uh, uh, needed today in construction alone. That's not even looking at the service jobs like HVAC tech plumbers, et cetera, on the service side.
[00:20:20] And so, and you know, you see numbers and you know, you see varied numbers depending on the body putting out the numbers. Um, you know, the average technician in these industries are 52 plus at this point. And so the, and the other thing people don't appreciate, 52 plus may sound young to a white collar worker.
[00:20:37] If you've been up and down ladders for 30 years, your knees are gone, like it's a harder career to run into your 60s, right? It just is. And so there's a, you know, there is no. Any 19 year old out there who has an appetite at all in a mechanical way or believes that it's looking for a path, I mean, there is unlimited opportunity here across all kinds of domains and it isn't for everybody.
[00:21:02] There are people who drop out, right? Like you get in the HVAC industry and you get in an attic that's 125 degrees and you've got to install something. That's not, I mean, you've got to have... Some real, you know, toughness there. It's not for everybody, and you're at heights, and you're cutting your hand, and you know, these are jobs that not everyone takes to, but those who do and are willing to do the work, and it's the kind of work they like to do, the opportunities are frankly endless.
[00:21:30] Sid Shetty: You know, Doug, you embrace the idea of VR, uh, virtual reality and have built a solution using technology that let's be honest, has not been ubiquitous. Right. Um, I think it's very much the future, but what made you so sure that this was going to be the best way to deliver training to technicians or any persona for that, for that matter?
[00:21:55] Doug Donovan: Yeah, so a couple things. One, I actually wasn't sure, and so we made a big bet at the end of 2016 when we decided to build an authoring engine. We talked about how we build our own content. We thought, okay, if we're building these simulations, should we, and we had just, the VR had just come to the point where it was like commercially viable.
[00:22:14] This is the end of 2016 and really powerful. Do we make a big bet on VR? And what we actually said was, as good as it is, The adoption we cannot control on the hardware. So what we did is we built an authoring engine. When we hit publish on a simulation, we don't care if you consume it on a tablet, or through your browser, or in VR. It's exactly the same training simulation. We wanted, so we wanted to untether ourselves to the adoption rate of the headsets because it still was, you know, questionable at that point. And still is, frankly. 6 years later, 7 years later, it's still not, uh, user, I don't think it's near user friendly enough for mass adoption, mass adoption. So most of our customers actually don't use the VR, they actually use these 3D simulations on 2D screens. However, for those who have adopted the VR, if you're willing, if you're going to, you know, fight through some of the technical friction, right, you need a little technical patience. We've all dealt with new tech, and you need that sort of technical patience.
[00:23:15] Sometimes I don't have that, by the way. Uh, then if you have somebody in a champion, and you start using VR, and you deploy the headsets, and you have a program around it, it is, you know, in my view, not a, you know, a degree or two degrees better. It's like eight, ten degrees better in terms of the power of learning.
[00:23:30] Because of, like... Your ability to focus inside of that, that high presence, because you're engaging your body, because we use space as a tool to retain and recall information, VR gets to create and present all of that really powerful learning tool. You know, unfortunately, it's still a little, you know, the on ramp is still sticky enough that we want to give people an easy way into, into this.
[00:23:54] So we have some people who dabble in it. But run the program mostly on tablets, that type of thing. But we're certainly excited as it continues to get easier to use and easier to trial, right? And more compatible with how we exist, right? When you adopt technology, there's sort of five things. Is there relative advantage? Check, absolutely, with VR training. Is there observable benefits? Absolutely, because you can show the learning outcomes and, you know, the studies and, you know, whether it's PWC doing studies or whatever, there's plenty of studies that show it, including military medical aviation. But is it easy to use, easy to trial, and is it compatible with how we operate? And those three, we have not overcome with VR. And so, until we figure out how to really get through those three, I don't anticipate to see massive adoption. But we're certainly excited for that day when it does come.
[00:24:46] Sid Shetty: I mean, Apple recently made a big bet themselves on VR, right? They launched the Apple ProVision. What did you think when you first saw that? Like, was it like validation? Like, yes, like this is going in the right direction. When Apple comes in and then suddenly creates a platform and a conduit for all this new tech to be experienced in a VR, suddenly. It's more accessible. I mean, Oculus existed before, right? But, you know, the more companies that, that back it, the more engineers are going to build new things that, that work in that environment. What was your first thought about it? And, you know, how does it change your outlook of the, for the future?
[00:25:29] Doug Donovan: Well, yeah, there certainly was the long promise of them entering for you every year. This is the year they're going to announce it at their, you know, annual summit and they finally did this year. So that was exciting. So just sort of breaking through, they came in at a very high price point, which it was very deliberate. They just want sort of the higher end applications, like it's sort of, it's still in, I would call it experimental mode. It's not really mass consumer. Meta and, and, and, uh, Facebook obviously bought Oculus and NUM. They're going after more of the mid market and lower price points. So they're, you know, they're trying to drive that. But as we know, there is no better consumer delivery goods company than Apple, right? And so having them in there certainly validates it with some depth. I don't, what I think it also signals, unfortunately, is like we're still a number of years away. Because if you come in at 3, 500, you're also telling... You know, the market like I know we're not quite ready for the 300, you know, mass adopted technology.
[00:26:26] I think it's still relatively early days. Now, they did some really interesting things technology wise that I think will be compelling and it'll be interesting. And I think they're Connection to like FaceTime world and the people who live, you know, think about all of our friends who live on their Apple device for communication day to day, like I think about my kids and the grandparents and we use FaceTime and they're talking, now you start connecting a 3D presence platform there and that's something that the meta hasn't gone as directly at or doesn't have that like the FaceTime piece of it like, like Apple does, the depth there. So I'm wondering if in that case, like, We start to see some interesting things there, like actually feeling like you're on vacation with your grandparents, or some things like that that actually may drive this cycle even faster. So, you know, I think it was a positive move for the industry, but I don't think there's enough there to say, ah, that breaks it open, now the acceleration curve is going to be dramatically steeper, adoption curve will be dramatically steeper. I don't see that yet. I think we're still a couple years away.
[00:27:31] Sid Shetty: Yeah. I mean, there's full VR, but there's also AR, right? I mean, augmented reality. I mean, I Do you see Interplay going into a space where it is beyond just training and gets into a more real time access to information in an AR environment versus just virtual reality?
[00:27:50] Doug Donovan: Yeah, it's a great question. So, a couple things. Number one, I, I, I, I'm in the more skeptical group on learning through AR, right? Because I believe an AR device, and typically if we're talking AR, we might be talking some kind of, it might be your phone, frankly, that could project something. Um, it could be a device in your head and they're starting to come along.
[00:28:11] Um, And then, you know, Google Glass was the famous one, sort of stumbled for a number of years. It seems to have picked up a little more momentum and seems to have some applications in the field. But regardless
[00:28:21] Sid Shetty: is ahead of its time for sure,
[00:28:22] Doug Donovan: Yeah, that's right. And even, like, even today, and I've tried a number of them, pure learning is really challenging because, in an AR environment, because of the cognitive load.
[00:28:33] If you're, if you're floating some diagram, and I'm trying to look at the real piece of equipment, and there's some noise in the back of the shop, and, you know what I mean? Like, there's just a lot going on, and we talked about the power of VR in that you're, your presence level is really high for that of a learning event. Learning's hard and if you're not in a space to learn and if you're overloaded, if there's a cognitive overload, you will not retain that. So I actually don't think AR on its own is a great foundational training tool. I do think AR is a fantastic tool for Reference materials, quick review, that type of thing, right?
[00:29:09] Like, quick things I need. So more for an efficiency tool in the field than a pure learning tool. And that's where you'll see interplay. So we'll start pushing some of our content, and I don't know if we'll get into AI today, but you start layering in an AI agent into that. And now you're really talking about having a co pilot in the field. Access to all of our training content. And you can imagine just asking some AI agent, it might be on your phone, maybe it's on another AR device, Hey, uh, I'm seeing this in the field. What are the things I should be considering as I troubleshoot this? And that agent can now pull from all of our data, 400 plus hours of, of, of training, have the contextual understanding of where this person is, and feed them some information.
[00:29:54] So that's going to be very exciting for us. Um, the next few years, if anything, like, I think VR is going to... You know, get, if VR is in the spotlight at all, it's shifting, obviously, AI has been the spotlight now. I think it's going to be more powerful for in the field, uh, in the field technician work.
[00:30:12] Sid Shetty: Yeah. I mean, there's no way you can talk about advanced tech and not talk about AI these days, right? I mean, there's massive leap in AI. And I think what's happened is, I think there was, there was tech, right? But it wasn't as easily accessible to the regular person. And with OpenAI and ChatGPT, what they've done is like they've put it in the fingertips of people that can now suddenly realize how impactful AI could be in their day to day lives.
[00:30:40] And into everything you just said, I mean, the application is, is kind of limitless in terms of what we're doing in every part of the business. But, um, you know, explain to me like what that means in your world. Like, you know, you just talked about, um. You know, AI in an environment where the technician could be talking to the AI bot or whatever you want to call it.
[00:31:08] And essentially, you know, AI is responding back with answers, you know, all in a matter of seconds by going back and looking at this repository or library of all this information. Is that, is that right?
[00:31:22] Doug Donovan: That's exactly right. So, if you think, you know, if I tried to explain what AI was to my mom, that didn't go so well. But, um, she's a smart lady, she's listening, uh, but, you know, she's new tech, so.
[00:31:34] Sid Shetty: Of course. It's the same with all of us, right? Yeah.
[00:31:37] Doug Donovan: What I basically said is imagine taking, you know, a body of knowledge. It might be a book or in our case, you know, catalog of 400 hours technical training and putting a conversational agent on the front end of it. So you could ask that AI agent any question and it can go scour and can answer in a conversational way like a human would.
[00:31:59] Converse about something. And to me that's the power of AI Today, the application today, people talk about big data and all that, and I think it's awesome. I know it's happening, but it feels like esoteric and hard for people to really consume and understand. But a technician, A technician, even the good techs are calling their service manager, you know, a couple times a day, Hey, I'm seeing this like, and I'm gonna do, they're looking for an endorsement, or maybe some counsel, should I go a route A root B?
[00:32:27] I think B because of X, Y, or z. Well, imagine the efficiencies, instead of calling that person back at the office, who by the way is getting calls from six other techs, um, imagine having the version of that experienced tech with them in the field. And that experienced tech not only has deep industry knowledge, contextual awareness, especially if you provide, Hey, I'm working on a heat pump, and you know, I'm in Seattle, and it'll know you're in Seattle, and if there's moisture in the air, it's going to start doing things like that. And that's contextual awareness. And the other thing people don't quite appreciate is it's an incredibly effective communicator, right? There might be, you know, I think of some of the smarter people in our company, and some of them like, you know, they're saying incredibly smart things, but it can be all over the place, right?
[00:33:15] You know, they don't, they don't present it like a paragraph with a topic sentence. AI does. So AI is really effective at concise and precise communication. And so we always try to mimic mentoring sessions. You know, there is nothing better, right? You and I have talked about in the past that, you know, following somebody who's great at their job for as much as you can and learning from them, fantastic.
[00:33:39] But some of those people might not be great communicators on why. Why am I doing this? Or, you know, like, not filling in the gaps. Whereas the AI agent would be a lot more comprehensive and consistent there.
[00:33:49] Sid Shetty: That's right.
[00:33:50] Doug Donovan: Real opportunity here for technical, technical advancement and technical efficiency. Again, Mona, I sort of left out learning a little bit if we're talking about in the field because don't get me wrong, there's of course learning, but I want to make sure that we, uh, we, we, we recognize what it's, that technology tool is really good for today, and what, you know, maybe it's not as good for.
[00:34:12] Sid Shetty: Yeah. I mean, when folks ask me about like, what was, what was that giant leap? What I say is like, look, there was always access to content, right? You could find content if you wanted to, but I think what OpenAI and ChatGPT have done is access to content and putting it into context, right? Like that, and, and kind of humanizing it. To a level that was never done before, you know, so
[00:34:39] Doug Donovan: But I'd also go one step further, and this is sort of tooting our own horn, because yeah, you're right, content's out there. There's great YouTube videos on a lot of stuff we also offer, and people pay for our stuff and could, in theory, get it from YouTube. But there, it is an inside of a contextual, uh, awareness of what's the career path?
[00:34:58] What should you learn next? Why? How can I connect this to credentials? How can I correct this to milestones and have like goals, etc.? And so, yeah, tech, like just open content, that's all out there. We all can go to, I think MIT, every course is free online if you want to do it. You won't have any credential that you went to MIT, but, you know, that's all out there.
[00:35:17] I think now you start layering in AI so you can have a smarter, not only just smarter on the subject we just talked about, like the real time helping you, but also in your career pathing, your career development. What should I take next? I've taken Ohm's Law. I seem to understand that. Give me some things I need to go do next to really become a great electrician and that AI agent can help in that as well. So I think we're really, you know, just like Netflix today or Amazon kind of knows the book or the movie you want next and you don't. How does it know that, right? So smart, right? I mean, it seems crazy that we're now just bringing that capability into education and career pathing. That same thing. Sid, you should take this course next. And by the way, if you have any questions, I'm here. I mean, I don't know where we are. It's really crazy.
[00:36:05] Sid Shetty: A hundred percent. I mean, I use, I mean, you could use chat GPT in the smallest of ways. It just makes your life easier.
[00:36:12] Doug Donovan: That's exactly right. And, you know, a lot of times they talk about capital allocators and some of them are good, some of them are not so good. But one thing that they're all sort of known for is pattern recognition. Oh, I've seen a company like this succeed and it looks like this. And, and AI is really good at that. And so you can get like that sort of pattern recognition real early too. I use it really similar you do. Send it a bunch of disparate thoughts like hey, this might have something to do with this and this like help me connect the dots there And I will see you even use that term and it will come back and it'll start like piecing it together for me Which I may have gotten to over a month of like mulling it in the back of my head But the ability to quickly connect those dots is incredibly powerful.
[00:36:58] Sid Shetty: That's right. That's right. And for folks in our audience, if you want to try this out, just go online, go to the app store, just download it and start playing with it. Like you will find it extremely, extremely beneficial. Um, Doug. What other technologies that you think we haven't discussed today that excite you? Anything that you would say is on the horizon and we should, you know, keep an eye out for?
[00:37:23] Doug Donovan: Well, for us, some of the things we have, our R& D department, our innovation department has put out so many things lately, and we're kind of like, we've got to organize this a little, decide what's the most important, most impactful, and what's the market really asking for, and we have some things like in VR, um, multi site training capabilities, so you and I could put on a headset right now, in our prototype world, and look at a heat pump together.
[00:37:51] And we could both pull out a multimeter and both take real time measurements. So imagine what the implications are that for an OEM who might have their expert in, you know, Palo Alto and they want to train in 16 places around the globe and they wanted to do it synchronously. You now can do that with a technical, you know, with a platform like this.
[00:38:10] So there's things like that that are incredible. Like, I just can't wait to see how that starts to play in. And I think we, you know, obviously went deep on AI, but I think The depth we just did was this. I could, I could walk you through like the seven different ways we're currently testing it. And, I mean, you know, again, we don't know adoption rates are exactly where it's going to be most effective for the market.
[00:38:31] But it's just, you know, to have this like magic ingredient in your kitchen is really incredible. And particularly where this ingredient is really good at taking information and making it more usable. And by the way, the last 12 years we've built a whole pack of great information. So we're really in a good position to leverage this this technology.
[00:38:52] Sid Shetty: Love it. Doug, as we wrap up our conversation, I wanted to, I want to ask you about Interplay and the awards you've won, right? So you, uh, I think have won the best small business to work for in Austin recently. Congratulations. Uh, what, what led to that? What's important to you as you think about running a company and the culture and the people that, um, you know, work there and want to work there?
[00:39:18] Doug Donovan: Yeah, it's a great question. So it starts here for those people who don't have the video on the back of my I have a poster behind me It says better careers better lives, and that's really at the core of who we are, and what we do.
[00:39:29] And this, this mission, we have better careers, better lives, underpins everything we do, right? We don't, we don't really, we often actually, we rarely use the term technician, we actually say learners, right? Like, they're about, they're learning and advancing their career. We don't, we don't talk about our platform more and more as a, you know, platform of content, but a career development platform. And we, and so. If you have that as an underpinning and, and, and maybe we're, you know, maybe we're just lucky because we happen to be in an industry where when we do really good work, the impact is, you can see it in people's lives. And there are other tools, by the way, tools that we use are important for us, like maybe a marketing widget. You don't quite see that. That direct line connection, but with us it's a direct line. And, and so what happened there with us is we had that as an underpinning, you know, sort of, um, belief and, and it's in our ethos on who we are. And I think, you know, you've heard this from other CEOs, if you get the first group of great, great employees like culturally that, that, that are aligned culturally, that care about each other, they treat each other well that are high performers. That are accountable to each other and really respect each other. Then you start attracting more and more A players, right? You're more in cultural A players, right? That's a cultural A player is super important. We've had cases where we've hired for skill and let culture be second or third on the list.
[00:40:51] And those people have not worked out. They just haven't. And so, culture, measuring culture, like, is this person going to fit in our ethos? We spend a lot of time on that. I believe, like, the CEO's job right now, at least at our stage, number one is making sure that this is a great place to work, that people can advance their own careers.
[00:41:12] And, you know, I say be selfish. Tell us what you need. Like, what do you need to get better? And what do you want to do? Is this the job? How do you advance? Etc. Because that selfishness actually drives the organization as a whole. And so, we end up all doing better as a result. And so, you know, at this point, I'd love to take credit for our great culture. It's now, like, has very little to do with me. It really has to do with the foundation we put in place. The markets we're in, the impact we're having, uh, and the fact that we have an economic engine to drive that impact makes it a whole lot easier because there's not that stress. Well, I know we're doing great work, but the margins are tight and we can't do all this. Like, we have a really sound economic engine that allows us to pursue that passion and be the best at what we know we can be at, which is, Technical training.
[00:41:59] Sid Shetty: I love it. I mean, is that kind of why you won the best in business award as well? That recognizes, uh, companies that put purpose ahead of profit. Is that what, what would you say is the purpose that you want to achieve out there and as an individual and as a company?
[00:42:16] Doug Donovan: I mean, this, this is it. Clear as day. You know, better careers, better lives. There is, I mean, you will watch every day, you know, Slack. Everyone lives on their Slack equivalent or whatever it is. And we have the, the, it's called customer stories. And we have somebody who populates that, you know, every two days, let's say, with a story. About, you know, Sally or Jose or Mark, and this is what happened with them in our, in our software and how it changed their lives. And so that purpose is something we talk about every single day. It drives our decisions. You know, will this work for the learner? Will this help them advance their career? And so it gets, it gets real easy to come to work when you hear those stories every day.
[00:42:55] And, you know, I, I wouldn't want to admit this to everyone on the team, but they've seen me cry plenty. Uh, when you hear these stories, you really appreciate like, holy cow, like what we're doing today is incredible. And then I think about where we could be in five years, right? This is, this is not a, just a domestic need. This is a global problem. And, and I think this worker group has mostly been overlooked, especially by high tech. Right, like they, you know, most venture, venture world and some of the heavy investment stuff been in the knowledge space and the white collar space. And so to be able to take some of the best in technology. And apply it to getting better careers, which lead to better lives for our customers and for our team. Makes it real easy to come to work.
[00:43:39] Sid Shetty: I love it. All right. Let's end with one fun question, Doug. If you could gain any skill to make your job easier, what would it be?
[00:43:48] Doug Donovan: Oh wow, jeez, there's so many, there's so many I'm bad at now. But the good news is, like, you have a good VP in every position, you're like, good. Like, now I get to go do whatever I'm supposed to do. Um, I, I would say, and I feel like this is one of those, like, Weakness questions you answer in an interview and you make it a strength, but, um, the, you know, I'm sometimes overly practical minded, like I think I wish I had a little more guts on making a bigger play. You know, like, you know what, this could, this, this should be a multi billion dollar organization that is driving massive global change. Like, at my heart, I believe that, but I don't sometimes have that, like, 28 year old, like, you know, lack of awareness and ability to just say, yes, we're going to go do that, right?
[00:44:36] And, uh, sometimes the practical nature holds me down a little bit. And sometimes I worry that that doesn't, you know, I'm putting a ceiling on where we can get because of that overly practical nature. Sometimes I do wish I was a little young, you know, a little younger and a little dumber. Because I do think that, like, would actually help us get, you know, reach higher heights. So, that's something I challenge myself on where I can, but it's not natural.
[00:45:02] Sid Shetty: There you go. Well, with that, I just want to say a huge thank you, Doug. Thank you for being on the show. We really, really appreciate it. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. For folks in our audience who want to reach out or, um, you know, ask a question, where's the best place they can find you?
[00:45:18] Doug Donovan: Well, for anybody just sort of poking around looking for Interplay, interplaylearning. com. You'll see, you know, pretty much everything. But people are also welcome to email me, um, ddonovan at interplaylearning. com. I'm happy to hear from everyone, particularly people in the industry who say, Hey, we have a problem.
[00:45:35] This is what we're seeing. Are you guys, you know, could you help us solve that problem? We, we, with our capabilities and the problems we've identified today in this call, like, we, we, we love stepping in and trying to help where we can.
[00:45:48] Sid Shetty: Awesome. Well, thanks again, Doug. Really, really appreciate it. And to all those in our audience, thank you for joining us, and I'll see you on the next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar.
[00:45:58] Well, that was Doug Donovan, CEO of Interplay Learning. What is evidently clear is that there is a gap in the skill trades, and we all have to leverage all the avenues available to solve for this in the long run. One of those avenues is training and upskilling, and it was great to hear from Doug on how he thinks about this. His solution to the talent shortage involves the three R's. Recruit, ramp, and retain talent. We also learned that there are huge leaps in technology that will reshape how we work and how we train in our space. And the next few years are going to be super exciting. How well we embrace these new advancements and how quickly they will be ubiquitous will remain to be seen.
[00:46:46] With that, I'm your host Sid Shetty, and I'll see you on the next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar.